Antojos

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Julia Alvarez
SHORT STORY

This version of the selection

alternates original text
While visiting her aunts in the Dominican Republic, Yolanda has borrowed a car from with summarized passages.
them. Now, she drives through the hills of her native country. She is on her way to find Dotted lines appear next to
guavas. A truckload of rowdy men wave their purple party flags at her, on their way the summarized passages.
to the hunger march in the capital. She turns on the radio to hear news of the hunger
march that was to take place that day. Her family had been afraid of trouble because
NOTES
the march had been scheduled on the anniversary of the failed revolution 19 years
earlier. She passes a market and sees the fruits of her childhood, mangoes and tamarind
pods and cashew fruits. What she doesn’t see is what she most wants: guavas.

In the capital, her aunts had plied her with what she most craved after
so many years away. “Any little antojo,1 you must tell us!” They wanted to
spoil her, so she’d stay on in her native land before she forgot where she
had come from. “What exactly does it mean, antojo?” Yolanda asked. Her
aunts were proven right: After so many years away, their niece was losing
her Spanish.

Yolanda’s aunts explain the meaning of antojo, “a craving for something you have
to eat.” She tells them that she has not had a guava since her last trip home, seven
years ago. Her aunts assure her she will get plenty of guavas to eat now. They call the
gardener, but he tells them guavas are not in season in the lowlands, though they might
be up north. The aunts offer to send the chauffeur up north to buy guavas and bring
them back.

Yolanda took this opportunity to inform her aunts of her plans: She could
pick the guavas herself when she went up north in a few days.
—She was going up north? By herself? A woman alone on the road!
“This is not the States.” Her old aunts had tried to dissuade her. “Anything
can happen.”

Her aunts are afraid Yolanda will come upon Haitian hougans2 and Communist
kidnappers if she travels alone. Now up north, she comes upon the small village of
Altamira. She stops at a cantina, where food is sold. There is a poster of a woman
enjoying a shower, a soap ad. Yolanda feels grimy from her road trip, and the poster
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makes her feel even more so. An old woman and a little boy come to serve her. The boy
is shy, and the woman must tell his name: José Duarte Sánchez y Mella García.

1. antojo  (ahn TOH hoh) n. craving [Spanish]. The story explores additional connotations of
the word.
2. Haitian hougans  (hoo GAHNZ) n. voodoo priests or cult leaders.

GRADE 11 • UNIT 5 • Accessible Leveled Text • Antojos 1

 Yolanda laughed. Not only were those a lot of names for such a little boy, NOTES
but they certainly were momentous: the surnames of the three liberators of
the country!
“Can I serve the doña3 in any way?” the woman asked. Yolanda gave the
tree line beyond the woman’s shack a glance. “You think you might have
some guavas around?”

The old woman says guavas are all around, but she says she hasn’t seen any. While they
are speaking, the little boy has been joined by some friends. Now, he points across the
road and tells the old woman that he knows where there is a whole grove of guavas.
The old woman tells the boys to go get some. But Yolanda stops the boy. She wants to
go, too. The old woman shakes her head, thinking it a bad idea. She will get dirty and
ruin her clothes.

“But they taste so much better when you’ve picked them yourself.”
Yolanda’s voice had an edge, for suddenly, it was as if the woman had
turned into the long arm of her family, keeping her away from seeing her
country on her own.

Yolanda asks the boys to drive along with her to the guava groves. The boys are beside
themselves with excitement. The old woman agrees that driving the car to the grove is
a good idea. She points out a shortcut. The trip is at first so bumpy, Yolanda wants to
turn back, but there is no room to make a turn. Branches seem to attack the car from
the side. And pebbles attack it from underneath. Finally, the car lands on a paved road.
On either side of the road are groves of guava trees! The boys who had gone on ahead
were shaking guavas off the trees.

… Yolanda and her crew scavenged the grove, the best of the pick
going into the beach basket Yolanda had gotten out of the trunk, with the
exception of the ones she ate right on the spot, relishing the slightly bumpy
feel of the skin in her hand, devouring the crunchy, sweet white meat. The
boys watched her, surprised by her odd hunger.

Yolanda and José wander off the grove path, picking up more guavas. Finally, they head
back to the car and discover that the other boys have gone. José says they probably
went to round up the goats. As soon as they start the car, they get a flat tire. Neither
of them knows how to change it. It is past six o’clock, and Yolanda wants to get off
the dangerous mountain roads while it is still light. José offers to walk to a well-known
house, the Miranda place, not far away, to get help. Yolanda says that if he is back by
six thirty, she will give him a dollar. She gets out of the car to watch him go.

Here and there a light flickered on the hills, a campesino4 living out his
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solitary life. This was what she had been missing without really knowing
that she was missing it all these years. She had never felt at home in the
States, never, though she knew she was lucky to have a job, so she could
afford her own life and not be run by her family. But independence didn’t

3. doña  (DOH nyah) n. madam [Spanish].

4. campesino  (kahm pay SEE no) n. poor farmer; simple rural dweller [Spanish].

GRADE 11 • UNIT 5 • Accessible Leveled Text • Antojos 2

have to be exile. She could come home, home to places like these very hills, NOTES
and live here on her own terms.

Yolanda heads back to the car. Suddenly, two men approach her from the opposite side
of the grove. They are dressed in ragged work clothes. Both have machetes hanging
from their belts. They ask if Yolanda is having a problem with her car. One of the men is
looking her over. They are both blocking her path. She wants to tell them she is going
back to the Mirandas’. That way, the men will think people know she is out here. They
offer to help her. But she is too afraid to speak. The men seem puzzled by her behavior.
Then, one of them understands.

“Americana,” he said to the other in Spanish, pointing to the car. “She

doesn’t understand.”
The darker man narrowed his eyes and studied Yolanda a moment.
“Americana?” he asked her as if not quite sure what to make of her.

Yolanda lays her hand on her pounding heart and nods yes. She finds her voice and,
in English, explains that she had been picking guavas. Then, she got a flat tire on her
way out and doesn’t know how to change it. Clearly, the men do not know what she is
saying. Yolanda switches to gestures and makes the motion of pumping, as if lifting the
car with a jack.

The small group stood staring at the sagging tire a moment, the two men
kicking at it as if punishing it for having failed the señorita. They squatted by
the passenger’s side, conversing in low tones. Yolanda led them to the rear
of the car, where the men lifted the spare out of its sunken nest—then set
to work. …

Yolanda turns on the car lights to help them see. The men manage to raise the car. One
of them goes under the car and comes out with bloody knuckles. Yolanda offers him a
towel, but he waves her away. They finish the job and return the keys to Yolanda. José
has not returned with any of the Mirandas. This is a relief. It means the men will not find
out she speaks Spanish and think she has tricked them. In fact, she had thought that
speaking only English would somehow make her safer.

“I’d like to give you something.” She began reaching for the purse she’d
retrieved from the trunk. The English words sounded hollow on her tongue.
She rolled up a couple of American bills and offered them to the men.

The first man refuses the money, saying it was his pleasure to help her. Yolanda tries to
give the bills to the second man. When he just looks down at the ground, she stuffs the
bills in his pocket. Then, she starts out toward the Miranda place.
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… Yolanda drove a few yards, poking her head out the window before
speeding up. “Gracias!” 5 she called, and they waved, appreciatively, at the
foreign lady making an effort in their native tongue.

5. Gracias  (GRAH see ahs) v. Thank you [Spanish].

GRADE 11 • UNIT 5 • Accessible Leveled Text • Antojos 3

 Just ahead of her headlights, Yolanda makes out the sight of José coming her way. He is NOTES
walking joylessly. When she opens the door and the car light shines on him, she can see
that he is crying. She asks him what is wrong.

The boy swallowed hard. “They would not come. They didn’t believe me.”
He took little breaths between words to keep his tears at bay. He had lost
his chance at a whole dollar.

The people at the Miranda mansion had hurt poor José. Yolanda realizes that she should
have gone with the boy. She promises him the dollar that she thinks he has more than
earned. Still, he seems to feel no joy, because he has been accused of lying. She asks
him what he will buy with the dollar, thinking she might bring him his antojo on her
next visit.

But José Duarte Sánchez y Mella said nothing, except a bashful thank
you when she left him off at the cantina with his promised dollar.

Copyright © 1991 by Julia Alvarez. Later published in slightly different form in How the García Girls Lost Their
Accents. Used with permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Copyright © 1991 by Julia Alvarez. Later published in slightly different form in How the García Girls Lost Their
Accents by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. By permission of Susan Bergholz Literary Services, New York, NY
and Lamy, NM. All rights reserved.

© by Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

GRADE 11 • UNIT 5 • Accessible Leveled Text • Antojos 4